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Couple years ago when I was writing about designing the 51st StateI told a story about Baby Swift. For those who don’t remember or didn’t follow my blog back then here is a short recap.
One week during play testing marathon of 51st State we received new artwork for the game. I printed old cards with the new artwork and prepared new version of the prototype. Among new cards there was a card called Baby Swift that gained an amazing piece of art (shown above).
Since that moment from being almost never drafted card it changed into nearly the most often drafted card in the game. I didn’t change the rule of the card. I have just put there an amazing art.
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We always say that there is lots of mathematics involved in the designing games. We work very hard to balance stuff, to calculate odds, to make all actions equally valuable. And yet, even though this calculations are pretty easy to achieve and in most cases we have no problem with that part of design process, we face many other problems, problems that can not be just simply calculated. Problems that have much to do with pure emotions and psychology.
Let me today tell you about interesting problems I face when play testing First Martians.
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First Martians is built on the engine of Robinson Crusoe. Both games use the same basic mechanism – you spend 1 Action Pawn and you roll a dice or you spend both your Action Pawns and you have auto success.
You go for Explore action, you spend 1 Action Pawn, so you grab green dice and roll. Most likely you will succeed (5 success icons), most likely you will have an adventure (5 adventure icons) and you’ll have so so chance to get wounded (3 wound icons).
Even though all adventures in the deck are bad, players often provoke adventures. They are eager to see what will happen. Get lost in the woods? Find cursed hut? Find corpse of dead goat? So many cool things might happen!
They roll dice, they have adventures, the game is rich in stories and theme. Robinson Crusoe at its best!
Let’s visit the Mars.
There is an interesting issue I face. Play testers don’t roll dice. They do all actions with 2 Action Pawns and they do everything, literally everything they can just to not roll dice.
Last test I run? They didn’t plant seeds in greenhouse, plants didn’t grow (obviously!) and in the second scenario players will most likely die of hunger, because food reserve is really low. And yet they just achieved objective of scenario, the absolute minimum they needed to achieve to finish the game and did nothing more. No single preparation for second game.
‘Why didn’t you plant seeds?’ I asked after the test game.
‘We had no time for that.’
‘You had time. You did all your actions with 2 Action Pawns. You easily could split some of them, roll dice and plant.’ I pointed.
‘I am not rolling these fucking dice’ I heard in response (and this is a quote just in case you wondered).
‘You will die of hunger in second scenario of the campaign!’
‘It’s space. I am not rolling these fucking dice in space.’
***
There is no logic here. There is nothing I could predict building the game. There is nothing I can address in rules set. This is just pure emotional problem. Having adventures on cursed Island is exciting and cool. Having adventures on Mars is…
‘I am not rolling these fucking dice.’
I Love First Martian. I can understand where people come from in the regular scenarios. I have done that in the normal standalone scenarios. I have done just eh bare minimum to win. But I have to have a different mindset in the campaigns. This is where the game shines through. The choices you have to make and the risk you have to take effect the next game. You cant just do the bare minimum in the campaigns. If you do it can make it harder for the next time you play the game. I have played the first campaign twice now and each time we have had to take a risk and roll the dice. We had too much we had to do and prepare for to not roll the dice. I am excited to see play the legacy campaign soon. I do hope for more campaign that are replayable. Thanks for making games that make you think. Excited to see what is in store for First Martians!
Hey Ignacy, I really like Robinson Crusoe, but the problem here is that the engine overwhelmingly reinforces negative feedback–players are on a slow slide to oblivion while a clock is ticking, and it only ever gets worse, not better. You’re not there to survive or prosper but to beat an arbitrary timer. And if you manage to compete that last task even though you’d starve, freeze, be eaten, whatever on the next turn, you still “win”. So of course players do that. But it’s an unsatisfactory conclusion. Maybe as a game that counts as a good ending, but that’s a lousy way to end a story.
On a lush island setting, based on a well-known story, in the first ever game of that type, ok maybe that’s just how it is. But frankly, the feeling is harrowing.
But in space? OF COURSE no one wants to deal with that–trying to survive in the most hostile environment possible is already harrowing enough just imagining the setting, much less when something is ready to jump out and randomly kill you the moment you do anything minor. Space is about hope, and Robinson Crusoe delivers very little of that. Hence I am not at all surprised to see the mismatch between players’ psychology and the new game setting. This is something you the game needs to account for.
There are plenty of unilaterally bad effects in Robinson Crusoe. But good things happen in life too. My advice would be to add some unilaterally good effects in Mars to balance out the bad; make the player feel like he’s surviving, occasionally even prospering, and not just completing a scenario and then dying immediately after, story be damned. Let there be some unadulterated good moments, too, when all is right with the world. Players need determination also, not just their characters.
And finally, if games are going to tell stories, then they need a story-like ending. As an author, you don’t just get to the climax and then the story stops. There is a denouement, a projection of the story arc into the future, e.g. “…and they lived happily ever after” (or not). In a story-rich game like RC or Mars, this is even more important.
Best of luck!
Thank you for the comment! Thank you for a good wishes.